DEDHAM, MA --Oct. 19, 2001According to a revised study by the ARC Advisory Group, the Enterprise Integration (EI) market, which had software and services revenues of $3.9 billion in 2000, will reach $4.8 billion in 2001 - despite the economic downturn - and grow at a 20 percent Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) to over $11 billion by 2006.
"Market growth in manufacturing industries has been driven by the need to accommodate new business models where supply chain management techniques, partner relationships, customer service, and others make external integration a requirement," according to ARC Vice President Bob Mick, the author of the Enterprise Application Integration Global Outlook market study.
The benefits of collaboration and consistent business processes have raised the level of integration planning to a strategic level, beyond automating and connecting. "This has stimulated interest in integration architectures, technologies, and products to provide consistent methods for leveraging all available resources, including those internal and external to the enterprise," Mick said. The increase in integration activity is accompanied by an increase in attention to those methods, products, and architectures that are more effective overall. Advanced forms of integration and component-based development and deployment are becoming established.
Collaborative manufacturing and e-commerce, for example, have created a strong demand for external integration (B2B), but in many cases internal integration (EAI) is required to enable external processes and provide necessary visibility. As a result, enterprise integration suppliers will provide both B2B and EAI capability, and the two markets cannot be cleanly separated.
Enterprise Integration has emerged from its traditional role as "middleware" to an advanced form of integration with a focus on implementing new and enhanced business processes within the integration software. Additionally, the process development and management tools are suitable for analysts.
The proven middleware technologies, such as message queues, message brokering, transformations, transaction processing, and legacy integration are still there in one implementation or another. In some cases, field proven modules are extended and leveraged by suppliers of general-purpose Business Process Management (BPM) products. From a marketing viewpoint, BPM products generate separate integration applications and are more visible throughout the life cycle, finally giving the integration suppliers a less technical product with a higher perceived value.
Enterprise Integration has always been heavily technical with difficult requirements such as portability, high security, high performance, and high reliability. The Sun J2EE (Java 2 Enterprise Edition) Platform, with Java component-based Applications Servers, has been adopted widely by most Enterprise Integration software suppliers, providing the consistency, portability, and re-usability long sought by suppliers and IT organizations. Any concerns about Java performance have been laid to rest by broad adoption and application to some of the most demanding integration situations.
Web Services are on the horizon with strong support from the J2EE based suppliers as well as Microsoft with its .NET platform. Web services will provide a standard communications interface between heterogeneous platforms, and is well suited for Internet-based applications and Enterprise Integration.
